Vice guide to New-York graffiti

New York?s graffiti scene in 2001 is made up of some of the most reckless drug users in America. Their crew is called Irak. They are rude, illegal, sometimes gay and always on the verge of losing their lives. We like to write about people who get fucked up, but this is bigger: Sacer, Semen and Earsnot are more than just ?most wanted? on the NYPD?s hit list. They are what New York looks like. If you close your eyes and think of this city you see the work of Irak and their peers. With this much hedonism getting this much credibility, it was time VICE put together the supreme guide to what, where, when, why and who is painting on the fifth biggest city in the world. We knew notorious fag filmmaker Bruce LaBruce hung out with them, so we flew him down to blow it wide open. We asked him to live with them for a week, go bombing with them, get Ryan McGinley to photograph everything and then research the history of this fucked up form of indigenous art.

He said sure, but then he got too wasted.

 

This isn?t an article about graffiti. If you want to read the definitive piece of journalism on throwing up (and I?m not talking about a Karen Carpenter profile), go to your local library and hunt down on microfilm an article from Rolling Stone called ?Mean Streaks? dated February 9, 1995. In it, Kevin Heldman, a real journalist, trails a couple of spraypainters around New York (following them into subway tunnels to stand breathless by their side as the trains barrel past; clambering up the Manhattan Bridge to observe them hanging from their knees to bomb or tag the mammoth structure) and generally lays out the whole historical and sociological context of urban graffiti.

 

Fuck that shit. I ain?t no kamikaze reporter fresh from covering the events in the war-torn Republic of Chechnya, nor am I any kind of expert on the graffiti scene. I do, however, enjoy getting blotto with a couple of the most unusual and gifted kids currently bombing New York. When I was asked to do this story I had high hopes, but all I ended up getting was high. It isn?t easy trying to write about vandals when you?re getting fucked up with them.

 

I arrive on a Saturday with my long johns on under my clothes, having just escaped from a twenty below zero Toronto cold snap. I stomp sweatily up the five floor East Village walk-up with my heavy bags. Ryan McGinley answers the door. This young cutie, who follows the writers everywhere they go fanatically taking pictures, is just now saying good-bye to Marc, his model boyfriend. They seem like they?re really stoned which, I will soon discover, is due to the fact that Tyrone, Ryan?s best friend (a corporate head-hunter and part-time ?rum-runner?) has just acquired some opium, a rare treat that only occurs a couple of times a year.

 

Ryan and I buy some beers and settle on the couch in the small, shabby living room in front of Tyrone?s widescreen digital TV with pirated cable to watch the Inauguration of America?s latest figurehead, Dubya. We get ridiculously high, like Withnail and I, just in time to witness the Latin queen Ricky Martin (who, incidentally, while a member of Menudo, was molested by the father of the Menendez brothers) do his queenly routine. He?s followed by a gays-in-the-military faggot who belts out ?God Bless America? as if she?s in a Broadway revival of Neil Simon?s ?The Star-Spangled Girl.?

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I?m flying high on the opium magic carpet , my kundilini shooting out through the top of my head into space, but still trying to concentrate on Dubya?s speech and Tyrone and Ryan?s repartee. With his choked pauses and clipped phrasing, Dubya seems like an automaton. I half expect white liquid to start dripping out of the corners of his mouth. He talks in vague, populist homilies which don?t really mean anything, like Mao. I?m convinced in my altered state that Iraq is going to drop the bomb on him right here and now, which would be appropriate, since the name of the graffiti crew I?m here to observe is called Irak (not the country, silly ? ?I rak? as in ?I shoplift?).

As a Canadian in the land of the Yanks, the ascent of the Texas travesty unfolding before our eyes is stirring up my old political punk leanings, but strangely I will soon discover that Ryan and the graffiti kids he will be photographing, despite their radical pursuits and flagrant disregard for the law? racking and mopping on a daily basis, tagging and throwing up wherever they go (crimes against property in this new era of hypercapitalism are the worst you can commit)? are surprisingly apolitical. The only thing they seem to want to boycott is talking to me seriously about graffiti. Nikes, new or vintage, are ubiquitous amongst the crew (what sweatshops?) and any conversation regarding the motivation behind spraypainting is devoid of any specific political or even anarchistic socialist rhetoric. Sure they often destroy mass media billboards and mall-like chains, but it?s not adbusting. It?s just wrecking something to ?ups fame? (an Earsnotism). The general impression is one of ?apres moi, le deluge.? Things are so fucked up at this point in history, so monumentally surreal, that only the impulsive moment counts, the rush of adrenaline garnered from racking or tagging, the natural high.

 

But believe me, the unnatural high for these kids isn?t chopped liver, either. The amount of opiates and pharmaceutical powders and pills that course through their veins would put Judy Garland herself to shame. Lucky for me, it fits right in with my new diet regime: no food, and tons of drugs.

 

I?m so high at this point, the last thing I want to do is interview someone, but I do my duty and try to contact the graffiti kids. Nobody?s answering their cell phones. VICE wants me to profile the real legends.

 

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Sacer. The guy you read about in The New York Times who did the ultimate throw up: The Brooklyn Bridge. This is a large deal for two reasons. One, when you do the bridge there is only a very tiny ledge separating you from the black water below and the odds of falling to your death are so high it makes me nauseous just thinking about it. Two, vandalizing a national monument is a felony which means if you do it more than twice you go to jail for life, or longer. Shortly after the bridge incident, he made the news again after throwing etching cream on a slew of high-end boutiques and pretentious galleries.

 

Earsnot. He?s more than one of the most prevalent tags in New York, he?s an infamous thief who often walks out of a store with three $400 North Face jackets. His crimes are popular with the press, too. So much so he?s had several two week stays at Riker?s.

 

And Semen. Semen is the one who draws those little sperms on every single door and window in New York. Once you start to look for them it becomes a challenge to find a block that hasn?t been hit.

 

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These are the people I?m here to profile, but do I have to do it now? Anyway, I hear a rumor that Sacer has fled to Texas, where Dubya stands on the TV in front of me.

 

As we watch the Knicks game, a stream of Jersey boys revolve through the apartment. They all talk in advanced homese so sometimes I feel like a visitor from a foreign country, which I suppose I am. Whenever the door buzzer rings you have to be careful to see who it is. A couple of weeks ago the cops busted in during the night and dragged Ryan down to central booking for some outstanding warrants. He got into a little altercation during his day and a half jail visit, from which he is still sporting a bandage on his hand, and says he doesn?t want to ever repeat the experience.

 

We finally drag ourselves out of the apartment at 3AM and go to a neighborhood dive gay bar where we encounter a fag who works for Honcho, the porn mag to which I frequently contribute. That?s where my memory ends.

 

<graf/5.jpg> The next day I go to the excellent fag novelist Bruce Benderson?s annual Martin Luther King Jr. party, but I?m pretty burned out so I leave at around 11PM. On my arrival back at the apartment, who should I find but Ryan, Sacer, Earsnot and Marc, all in full party mode. The first thing that catches your eye when you see these kids is gold. Gold fronts, gold chains with gold tanks hanging off them and gold rings. Bling bling. After that it?s an expensive combination of high end Gucci hats and low end Nike Uptowns. They are all very high. Well, when in Rome, do coke, special K, Vicodin and Budweiser, I always say.

 

Semen drops by and, as it?s his birthday, we?re compelled to get even higher. We?re watching the patterns you can create by playing CDs on a Sega Playstation, an option, I was just reading in the newspaper, developed in cahoots with NASA scientists to control the brainwaves of hyperactive children, which most, if not all, graffiti writers surely are. The song we?re playing, appropriately, is ?Paint it Black.?

I decide it?s time to clean up their act so, with a shaky hand, I reshave Sacer?s hair into a Mr. T modified Mohawk in the bathroom as Ryan snaps photos. Sacer is nineteen, married, diminutive and cute as a fucking button, with epic tattooage and a killer smile. The first night I met him he and Earsnot snuck me into a very exclusive Ford model party at Lotus, where Kate Moss was spinning (she was also DJing). Sacer bought me drinks and told me about his tragic life, something about his parents dying in a bizarre ritualistic murder-suicide when he was a kid. Earsnot also filled me in on his sordid past, but I got the feeling that their personal bios are as fluid and transient as their tags. Earsnot is tall and handsome and has a big smile, but has been passed out about 73 percent of the time I?ve seen him. He?s a fag and has a preference for that burly, hairy, 40-plus subgenus known as the ?bear.? He hibernates in the Bronx with just such a noble creature.

 

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The fact that both Ryan and Earsnot are openly fag in the circles in which they travel is pretty remarkable, but it?s something you don?t really think about when you hang with them because they are so unfaggy. There?s a certain amount of machismo in the graffiti world. If you paint over another writer?s tag or write ?toy? over it, the ultimate dis, you better be prepared to drop your paint cans and put up your dukes. And most writers aren?t really down with the gay thing, so it?s pretty brave for this crew to be so ?fuck you? about it, even though only one of their members is a card-carrying faggot.

 

Sacer and Ryan and I amble on up to the roof to get some fresh air. Ryan is covered in a multicolored Indian blanket, looking like a cross between Howard Beale, Tiny Tim and the cutest white homeboy ever. Sacer is in tout camouflage and with his Mr. T do resembles a hot militia member. With a can of Bud in his hand,Sacer jumps up on the front ledge of the building and peers seven floors down into the black abyss as Ryan and I snap pictures. As Sacer dances and prances and does a jig on the precipice of death, I discover I don?t have the stomach for this. For a moment I think it?s a classic case of the Heisenberg principle?the presence of a ?journalist? influencing the behavior of his subject, causing him to take risks in a way he normally wouldn?t?but then I realize I?m flattering myself. The adrenaline, the flirtation with death or jail or bodily harm, is as natural for these kids as peeing. Sacer is poised to lob a snowball at a passing car fifty feet below and as I fear that the momentum of the throw will send him over, I choose to retreat back to the apartment. I wait in anticipation for Ryan to come running down from the roof yelling that Sacer has gone over, is gone forever, but after a few minutes the two of them come stumbling into the room laughing. Ha ha.

 

The next night we all end up at a trendy place where, at various points in the evening, I see George Stephanopolous, a woman who looks like Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger, three Hell?s Angels with some loose models and a bunch of young artists and spraypainters. Sacer is underage, but he?s drinking for free and we?re doing lines right off the tables. Believe it or not, there?s a whole lot of other stuff going on that I can?t even write about, but ultimately, on the way home, a member of the Irak crew who shall remain nameless accidentally on purpose torches a huge bundle of Christmas trees propped up on the street in front of the bar. The flames are shooting twenty or thirty feet high as Ryan and I snap photos. It doesn?t seem like that big a deal to me, but after someone calls 911, Ryan convinces us that we should bust out fast so we hop in a cab and book. Dismissing the little incident as a harmless prank, we go to a friend?s restaurant and drink wine till the wee hours. At one point I get all weepy thinking of Sacer last night on the roof, plummeting into the void, supernova-ing. He pats my shoulder consolingly. He?s too beautiful a soul in an ugly world to burn out like that, but I suppose that?s why his life has to be constantly on the verge of sacrifice to make that point.

 

<graf/8.jpg> The next day, Ryan and I go to check out the damage outside the bar. Apparently a car caught fire and may have slightly exploded or something. It does look a little charred, like something you might have seen in Beirut in the 70s. The Irak crew member in question has to get out of town before sundown, heading, appropriately, south of the border into the sunset. So I guess that?s the end of my reportage.

I have accompanied the kids on bombing expeditions before and it?s pretty much what you might expect. Every square inch of the city is a potential target for their tags, every store a wealth of free goods. At this point their behavior is compulsive, an addiction and definitely not something that they can articulate, nor should they be expected to. I see them as antibodies attacking the infections of the modern world: corporatization, materialism, brainwashing, conformity, mass indifference. Graffiti is one of the last forms of rebellion left, and it looks pretty, so shut up.

I call the refugee Irak pyromaniac in Texas and he?s having a helluva time. He?s bombed some major billboards and at least sixty railroad cars. And he?s bringing me back a pillowcase full of pills from Mexico. So shut up.

 

BRUCE LABRUCE

Hahahahahahah, they called him Tyrone...LOL...Tyrone....Those IRAK articles are too much...

ahhhh to be young. rich. gay. and a hell of a bomber.

 

 

the thing is thats not what all of nyc graff is all about. you dont see me shootin my lines of coke. but ill be damned as hell the first one to walk on the ledge of a building and the first to lite a tree on fire.

holy tiger beat journalism! I wish he'd leaned more heavily on the 'gay' angle...

ugh�

"my new diet regime: no food, and tons of drugs."

 

haha. great

Originally posted by Smart

holy tiger beat journalism! I wish he'd leaned more heavily on the 'gay' angle...

 

vice makes everything into a 'gay' issue, no matter how far it might be removed. its sort of their 'angle' if you will..... it was intentionel

uhuh..thanks for posting it.goodread.

fun to read, tough to think about.

 

i found that one and the other irak article and the image of earsnot walking down the street puking blood and shooting heroin is really a negative thing to be posting about ANYBODY, not just "self-destructive graffiti writers." it really is a pretty sorry excuse for journalism that this guy basically hangs out and gets wasted with these kids over and over again and writes a story about it. i actually began to feel bad for the people featured in that article rather than envious of their "every night is new years" lifestyle. you can take it with you, i dont need it.

Originally posted by fr8lover

fun to read, tough to think about.

 

i found that one and the other irak article and the image of earsnot walking down the street puking blood and shooting heroin is really a negative thing to be posting about ANYBODY, not just "self-destructive graffiti writers." it really is a pretty sorry excuse for journalism that this guy basically hangs out and gets wasted with these kids over and over again and writes a story about it. i actually began to feel bad for the people featured in that article rather than envious of their "every night is new years" lifestyle. you can take it with you, i dont need it.

im not the only one then that sort of started feeling bad for the "characters" in this story. interesting read.

One of these crews is doin' its own thing...

cheerleader is *crushing* hard on snoty.....

 

i would do heroin and yay with him....a graffiti speedball!!

 

unfortunately, im a riot grrrrrl, not a boy. *frownies* =(

 

**you rak! we rak! IRAK!!**

not a bad article but the other one about irak was better dont remember the name of the mag

dazed magazine

Yet again the drug-party lifestyle is put on a platter while the working stiffs of graf culture get kicked harder to the curb.

 

I guess this shit sells.

 

Originally posted by cheerleader

 

i would do heroin and yay with him....a graffiti speedball!!

 

 

Hahaha YEAH THAT'D BE GREAT! You're a dumb bitch ... ALRIGHT!!

Originally posted by Clever Name

Yet again the drug-party lifestyle is put on a platter while the working stiffs of graf culture get kicked harder to the curb.

 

yeah, surely they only got the coverage because they are some sort of gay drug users... oh, and they're up... way more than you, in NYC among other cities...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

sour grapes?

i wish i had a sega playstation.

Sacer..man what can I say.. the kid has a huge amount of ups. I've seen his shit in the most random of places out here in nyc. I mean his lifestyle's not my cup of tea but that has no reflection on how I feel about his graffiti career. -

 

---to all nyc/all borough kids---- .....check the freedom tunnels at 125th st....you'll be amazed at what the kid has done.

i know hulk... i know....... the first to do everything huh:rolleyes:

Originally posted by Smart

 

yeah, surely they only got the coverage because they are some sort of gay drug users... oh, and they're up... way more than you, in NYC among other cities...

 

I figured that comment would be argued, but it's the truth.

 

Nobody wants to write about some hard working motherfuckers who put everything on the line for graf and graf only. I won't knock those IRAK guys at all, they get up and do their thing -- I'll just knock the dumb asses who think it's cute to glamorize their lifestyle away from graf in an effort to be controversial or "shocking." Fuck them.

 

Take a look at Nace -- one of the truest and most dedicated writers around; it wasn't until his death that people outside the graf world took notice of what an impact he made on the culture.

 

I don't mean to be such an argumentative dick, but when I see shit like that article it just pisses me off. I guess I'm just frustrated with things I can't change. Don't mind me.

semen is the motherfucking shit! YHEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

NAGA NOOOOOOOOCH!

You act like their lifestyle is contrived just to be controversial and shocking....When in reality you know nothing about them, at all...The IRAK crue just happens to be one of the hardest working crews in NYC...You disagree with the lifestyle thats fine, you have to understand these articles are completely sensationalized because look who wrote them...A gay porn director of all people!!! And dont bring the fallen into this for that matter...Oh and SEMEN is the man!!!!!!

Originally posted by Clever Name

 

I figured that comment would be argued, but it's the truth.

 

Nobody wants to write about some hard working motherfuckers who put everything on the line for graf and graf only. I won't knock those IRAK guys at all, they get up and do their thing -- I'll just knock the dumb asses who think it's cute to glamorize their lifestyle away from graf in an effort to be controversial or "shocking." Fuck them.

 

Take a look at Nace -- one of the truest and most dedicated writers around; it wasn't until his death that people outside the graf world took notice of what an impact he made on the culture.

 

I don't mean to be such an argumentative dick, but when I see shit like that article it just pisses me off. I guess I'm just frustrated with things I can't change. Don't mind me.

sace and nace where very good friends despite outside lifestyle issues.where in the same crew and painted together often.....despite all the ''wild nights'' sace has he is one of most up writers right now...and his stuff pops up alot.....

that was my whole point. the article never needed to be made in the first place. thats not the kind of credit that those guys deserve to get. it was more about earsnot being gay and sace and co doing drugs and lighting stuff on fire than what the title says it is supposedely about: graffiti. ill be the first to admit that these guys are EVERYWHERE in manhattan and beyond, ive seen a lot of it in person, but thats besides the point. the article was, as you said, a sensationalized view from an already FRINGE society author on an even more FRINGE society group of people, those two things combined lead to an article that obviously wont have any purpose or meaningful scrap of quality information.

 

if you havent noticed before, thats what the media does. they take something thats blown way beyond normal societal proportions and to make it even more UNBELIEVABLE they spin it to hell. "*gasp* those kids write on walls AND do heroin in nightclubs." thats the kind of response that they are trying to get from joe public who probably sees their tags on his way to work and says to himself, "go figure, lowlife scum."

 

im sure those guys arent too proud of what was said about them in both of those articles, but all publicity is good publicity...and once again the irak crew got over in a way that most writers cant, in the press.

Originally posted by Clever Name

Hahaha YEAH THAT'D BE GREAT! You're a dumb bitch ... ALRIGHT!!

 

Good Call!!!

....

 

coke is nasty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

..but they got up.

 

 

pyromanina.

Originally posted by Can you sign my book???

You act like their lifestyle is contrived just to be controversial and shocking....When in reality you know nothing about them, at all...The IRAK crue just happens to be one of the hardest working crews in NYC...You disagree with the lifestyle thats fine, you have to understand these articles are completely sensationalized because look who wrote them...A gay porn director of all people!!! And dont bring the fallen into this for that matter...Oh and SEMEN is the man!!!!!!

 

Nah bro, you're missing my point like I think Smart did.

 

The IRAK guys' lifestyle is whatever it is, thats cool. What's bullshit are the attention-hungry journalists who play off their lives' to make THEIR OWN ARTICLES seem "controversial and shocking."

 

Sace and them are up a lot, A LOT. Big props to them -- I'm sure they have a lot of heart. I just don't like seeing the wrong kind of attention being given to them. It's exploiting the graffiti culture, and turning it into another item on this month's/year's/era's fashion list; I think it's wack.

 

"if you havent noticed before, thats what the media does. they take something thats blown way beyond normal societal proportions and make it even more UNBELIEVABLE " -- fr8lover

Wow. What a waste of my time. When a bomber comes along that does dope shit and is really up, then maybe I'll notice. Oh wait....Twist. Never mind.

True...

Originally posted by Clever Name

Nah bro, you're missing my point like I think Smart did.

 

yeah I did, sorry bro... that's what I meant by "TigerBeat" journalism... it was all,

 

I'm with the cool GAY people and we do DRUGS and they paint but let's go back to the DRUGS did I mention they' GAY and COOL...OH, and they STEAL and set things on fire